by Tamara Leigh
Chapter 36
COME DANCE THROUGH LIFE WITH HIM
Costain was vexed by what was wrought outside his walls, and of greater offense he presented as bored when informed of the sideshow—until Elias revealed King Henry had expelled Troupe Fantastique from England. That revelation also cleared the disapproval from Otto’s face. As both men owed allegiance to the duke, they would not wish to displease him. Too, there could be reward in claiming to have aided in ending Théâtre des Abominations.
Feeling every minute that neared the middling of night, Elias said, “If we are done, I would seek my rest.”
Costain waved a hand. “Go. And pray, do not further disturb my household.”
Elias dipped his head and closed the solar’s door behind him. As he moved down the corridor toward the chamber he would share with Otto and two other visiting lords, he eased his shoulders.
All was well. Hart and the little ones had been discreetly conveyed to the chamber the Costain sisters ceded following the final act which saw the performers withdraw to their camp where they would learn of the deaths of four of its members, the loss of its sideshow, and the need to regroup.
It would be a blow to some, but likely a boon to the majority who had not benefited from Jake the Jack’s perverse offering. Regardless, the troupe would depart Sevier on the morrow. As for Honore and the children, they would travel to Elias’s home where arrangements would be made for their return to England once all were fit for the journey.
Elias did not realize he had paused outside the chamber given Honore and the children until he heard a sound of distress. He assured himself it was one of the little ones sleeping fitfully. And opened the door.
Kneeling on the hearth before a waning fire, Honore’s head was bent and shoulders hunched.
He strode inside. “Honore?”
She looked around, put a finger to her lips, and nodded at the bed.
He considered the four cocooned in blankets—Hart on the left, the little ones on the right placed horizontally so they would not roll off.
Honore rose, and when she turned, he saw what was surely responsible for the distress that made him enter. In one hand she gripped a needle, the palm of the other evidencing short lines of blood.
“Close the door,” she whispered.
He did as bid, crossed to her, and caught up her hand. Blessedly, her palm was only stuck through with splinters. “My brave Honore, why did you not tell me you were hurt?”
She tried to tug free. “It is a little thing.”
Keeping hold of her, he lifted her other hand that clutched the needle. “All these hours you have suffered.”
“They are only splinters, Elias.”
“Dozens.” He drew her to a chair, knelt at her feet, and took the needle from her.
“I can do it,” she protested.
“I can do it better. Allow me.”
Sensing her struggle, he looked up and saw how red her eyes and flushed her face. “You have been crying.”
“Happiness and…”
“What?”
She shook her head. “It is over and the children are safe, and yet I keep seeing, fearing, feeling it all.” She swallowed loudly. “The world is…”
“It can be dangerous outside your abbey walls, but it is over, Honore.”
She nodded. “I know I am silly.”
“You are not. Much has happened for which you were not prepared—as hardly was I, a warrior. There is nothing silly about your emotions, so do not begrudge yourself tears.”
Eyes brightening further, she splayed her fingers. “I removed all from my left. The right is more difficult.”
He moved that hand into firelight and began picking at the slivers. “How did you gain these?”
“The railing. I could hardly hold on when the wagon started to tip.”
“My brave Honore.”
“Elias?”
“Hmm?”
“Pray, cease naming me that.”
Though he knew to what she referred and that she was right, he tried to ease the tension with humor. “Is it not your given name?”
“As well you know, you name me what I am not to you—what I can never be.”
“Regardless, you are brave.”
She went silent, after a time said, “I thank you for saving Hart and the little ones. You are a good man.”
“As I strive to be, though often I fail.”
“I doubt that.”
“The possibility I could have made a child with Lettice proves otherwise.”
“You kept your word to her—and me. And yet…”
He looked up, as ever marveled over her eyes.
She glanced at the bed. “Now is not the time to speak of such things.”
She feared awakening the children, especially the boy. But Elias was fairly certain he knew what troubled her. She wished to know why he distanced himself from the son he had set out to rescue.
He returned to the splinters and when he drew the last free, said, “Have you any cloth with which to bandage your hands?”
Her smile was wry. “Much.”
He stood, and she rose and crossed to the dressing table where lay a stack of linen strips provided for her menses.
After she washed her hands in the basin alongside which a hand mirror sat face down, he dried and bandaged them. “Better?”
“All will heal,” she spoke the same he had earlier that evening.
Loath to leave her, he set a hand on her shoulder. “You and the children will accompany me to my home. When the little ones are fit enough to travel, arrangements will be made for your return to England.”
Her smile was forced. “I thank you. For everything.”
He knew he should not, but he slid his hand from her shoulder to her neck and tilted her face higher. “You are lovely.”
Her gaze wavered. “No longer need you be so kind.”
“It is not kindness that makes me speak such. I have known no other woman besides Lady Susanna as lovely on the outside as she is on the inside.”
“That is enough,” she hissed.
“I speak in truth.” He picked up the hand mirror he guessed she had turned down, raised it between them. “Look.”
She turned her face to the right. “Pray, cease!”
“Honore—”
“I know what I look like.”
“You do not. If you did, never would you have worn the gorget as you do.”
“I am not ashamed. I wear it not for my benefit but for those who fund much of the good work at Bairnwood.”
“They are not here, Honore. It is just you and me. If you are not ashamed, as you have no cause to be, look.”
“I was not ashamed before you,” she gasped. “I vow I was not. I—” Horror flickered in her eyes as if she realized what she revealed.
“Honore, look.”
She began to tremble, but though he hated he was responsible, she needed to see what he saw.
Moving the mirror aside, he leaned in and set his mouth on hers.
She stilled, and when she responded, she did so by speaking his name—with pleading born of sorrow rather than desire.
He raised his head. “I like your mouth just the way it is. Soft. Sweet. Pretty.”
Her eyes moistened. “You make it difficult to leave you, and we both know I must.”
He did, and he was selfish to offer something she could not take hold of anymore than he. “Oui, but ere we part, I would have you see the flower I see.” Once more, he set the mirror in front of her.
Fear surfacing her eyes, she held her gaze to his above the silver rim.
“You have naught to fear,” he said. “You have only to look.”
It was his eyes Honore wanted to delve. In his she wished to remain. Though she had never looked long upon her reflection in a beaten silver platter or rippling water, she had a good idea of what she would see if she lowered her gaze.
Ashamed? That was too harsh a thing to feel for something over w
hich she had no control and could not be blamed. But she was self-conscious as she had not been for years, so much she felt the tug on that side of her mouth more than ever she had felt it, and ten-fold greater when Elias looked upon the whole of her face, though he had given her no cause to believe him repulsed.
Then there was this longing to be as beautiful to him as she knew herself to be to God. Other than the young monk who never returned, she had wanted that with no other. All that had mattered was, absent the gorget, she move amongst her foundlings without frightening them. Elias wished her to believe the scar did not matter, and more and more she did, but was it truly of so little consequence that if he could be with her he would?
“Would you have me if you could?” She startled at hearing her whispered words, but he did not.
Sorrow dimmed his eyes, and he said, “I would. Now look and see the woman I would awake to every morn could I.”
She believed him—at least, Elias who did not yet know what must be revealed. Would he forgive her when the tale of Finwyn and Lettice was told? If still he believed Hart his son, very possible, but surely he would look nearer upon the boy. What if he did not see himself in Hart’s face as she did not? What if he saw Finwyn though she did not?
He had vowed to retrieve Lettice’s son, so still he would be here. Still this night would have ended thus. Even so, it would not change that she had lied and he who thought well of her no longer had cause. Then what would he see when he looked at her?
That last made her lower her gaze down the silver surface. She nearly gasped over so perfect a reflection. There was no distortion, exactly what one would see peering into another’s face. Or was there? She knew her eyes were very blue, but this blue?
“What is it?” Elias said.
“Are they really so blue?”
With a smile in his voice, he said, “Nearly. In daylight they are more brilliant, and the outer edges that now look black are purple.”
Would the night also dim what she had yet to look upon, that whose distortion could not be blamed on the mirror? She curved her lips into a smile Elias said made her lovelier and moved her gaze down her nose. There was the ridge tugging the right bow higher than the left, but not as high as thought. Nor was it as pronounced as believed where it angled up toward a nostril. Of course, she was smiling.
By degree, she relaxed her mouth. The ridge became more visible, but Elias was right. It was not unsightly. Though it could not be overlooked, unlike that with which Hart and some of the little ones were born, her repaired lip rendered it acceptable.
She closed her eyes, opened them on Elias’s. “I have looked. I have seen. And no more will I don the gorget.”
She reached and, fingers brushing his, took the mirror and set it face up on the table.
The silence making it feel as if an embrace belonged in the space between them, she said, “You have met Hart’s little ones?”
As if also feeling the intimacy to which they ought not succumb, Elias stepped back. “Briefly.”
Then he was aware of their afflictions. “You know the names Hart gave them?”
“Only Alice. I heard him call her that.”
She moved past Elias, and he followed. Halting on the side of the bed opposite Hart who slept facing them with a fist against his mouth, she said, “Alice you know.” Lightly, she ran fingers through the soft red curls of the year-and-a-half-old billed as Poseidon’s Child for her webbed fingers and toes.
She moved her hand to the head of the two-year-old boy whose brown hair also covered much of his face, arms, and legs, albeit not as thickly as that atop his head. “This is Jamie.” He who had been called Son of Boar.
“And Rayne.” She stroked the three-year-old girl’s cheek that was nearly as white as her hair, the only real color about her the pink eyes that now moved behind her lids. Touted as born of angel and man, she had been called The Nephilim.
All these abominable names Hart, himself called The Map, had refused to use. He loved his little ones. If not for them, his resourcefulness would likely have allowed him to escape, but these three—and the joined twins who had passed—had needed him. Despite all he had endured, he was proud of being to them what she was to her foundlings.
He had helped settle them for the night, soothing them with song, prayer, and kisses on cheeks, noses, and brows. Regardless of who had sired Hart, a fine man he would make.
She shifted her gaze to him, saw he looked between Elias and her.
“We awakened you,” she whispered. “Forgive us.”
He frowned. “Are my little ones well?”
“They are. Alice breathes easier.” It was the youngest Hart had been most concerned about since she had taken ill shortly after the joined twins passed.
He pushed up on an elbow. “You will help us get back to Bairnwood, Sir Elias?”
“Once all have recovered at my home where we journey on the morrow providing Alice is well enough to travel.”
Hart smiled faintly, looked to Honore. “I forgot to ask if you saw the beads. Is that how you found me?”
She gasped. “You scattered them?”
“I did. When Fin came to France and I saw he had them, I feared he had hurt you. I stole them, and when Jake took me from Squire Theo, I dropped the beads until I ran out.”
“How did you know I would find them?”
“I thought Squire Theo was Fin when he caught me in the wood, and I fought him until I saw he was not. He told who he was and that you were at the castle with his lord.” He glanced at Elias. “He said you had come across the channel to rescue us. After Jake struck down the squire, he warned if I cried out he would hurt Alice. I did not know you would find the beads, but when he put me over his shoulder, I took the necklace I had wound around my arm beneath my sleeve so Fin would not see it, chewed through the string, and said a prayer for each I dropped. And you came.”
“As did Sir Elias,” she said. “Much is owed him.”
Hart narrowed his eyes at the knight. “Who are you?” he asked in the direct way she sometimes had to correct. Though she wanted to correct him now, she decided to let Elias determine whether to answer.
His hesitation bothered, just as when he had referred to Hart as a boy, rather than his son, as he guided her toward their reunion at the wagon. Too, she was disturbed by the weight of what she now realized was something between disappointment and apathy.
“But a friend,” Elias said.
Then either he was no longer certain Hart was his or something made him certain he was not. Or wish he was not. Hart’s face?
Though alert to how he and other foundlings were regarded on the rare occasion they encountered those outside their world, she had been unable to gauge Elias’s initial reaction since she had been with Finwyn when Elias forced his way into the wagon. She looked to him now. His eyes remained on Hart, but naught in his face reflected fascination or revulsion.
Hart sighed. “I am glad you are Honore’s friend. She has only us, you know.”
Throat constricting further, she squeezed past it, “We shall speak more on the morrow. Now you must sleep.”
He lowered to the pillow, set a hand on Alice’s foot, and closed his eyes.
Avoiding Elias’s gaze, Honore crossed to the door and opened it. “Good eve, Sir Elias.”
He stepped into the corridor, and she closed herself in, extinguished the candles, and made her bed in the chair before which Elias had picked out every sliver that now felt as if embedded in her heart.
She pressed a hand to her chest, whispered, “A heart that is yours, Elias. Shall ever be yours.”
Chapter 37
LOVE LOST NOW FOUND
Château des Trois Doigts
France
All but four.
Silly though it was, Honore felt the absence of beads over which she would never again slide her fingers. It seemed ungrateful to mourn the loss of so few when she should have been fortunate to recover only enough to assemble a bracelet. Instead, Ha
rt and Cynuit had searched out enough to restring her necklace.
For the first hour of the ride, the prayer beads had soothed Alice as she pulled them over her webbed fingers and tapped them against her tiny teeth. Now she slept tucked between the saddle’s pommel and Honore’s abdomen. Though on occasion she became restless, coughing and rubbing her nose, she traveled well. Elias was to thank for that, having resisted his father’s impatience over the sedate pace.
Once more, Otto De Morville grumbled they should have made use of the covered wagon that would have allowed them to move more quickly, but Elias offered no further comment. At Sevier he had defended his decision to burn it in sight of the children, not only to symbolize the end of their bondage, but so it could never again be used for such foul means. And there had been the advantage of setting it afire during the troupe’s departure—dire warning.
Honore peered past Theo whose arm was around the wide-eyed, thumb-sucking Jamie to Hart who straddled the back of Cynuit’s saddle. As if awaiting her gaze, the boy smiled. It was not as genuine as she knew him capable of, but she had to believe that just as he was stronger for his ordeal, eventually he would recover sufficiently to reclaim a portion of his childhood.
She returned his smile and looked to Elias who rode ahead alongside his sire. With his back to her, she could not see the pale Rayne perched before him shrouded in cloak and hood at the insistence of Hart who said even blunted sunlight hurt her eyes and quickly burned her skin.
That these children are now safe and will be more so at Bairnwood is much for which to be grateful, Honore told herself. So much my heart ought to be full.
It was not, though it would have been had love of Elias not stretched it to so great a size that when they parted there would be a vast, empty space alongside love for her foundlings.
You are greedy, she chastised. Be content with the love you have—more than many can hope for.
Honore did not realize Elias had slowed until she neared and saw his father remained a length ahead.